READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Fame Machine

Fascination is universal for what Aaron Spelling, a prolific producer of American soap operas, once called "rich people having problems that money can't solve". The fascinated in star-struck Britain have no equal. The country has a profusion of titles devoted to chronicling even the smallest doings of celebrities. Britons buy almost half as many celebrity magazines as Americans do, despite having a population that is only one-fifth the size. Celebrity news often makes the front page of British tabloid newspapers, providing a formidable distribution channel for stories about celebrities. New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation show that the ten best-selling celebrity publications and ten most popular tabloids have a combined circulation of 23 million.

Satisfying this voracious demand has turned what was once a shoddy, amateurish business into an entertainment industry in its own right. Its business model has two distinguishing features. First, celebrity has become the product--rather than just a device for marketing films or music. The "talent" (if that is the word) owes its standing chiefly to the celebrity machine and not to any particular gift. It therefore depends on the attentions of the press to make money. Second, celebrities, agents, photographers and picture desks have found that the most efficient way to create an endless supply of celebrity news is to work together. A business that used to be based on intrusion has discovered a preference for collaboration.

It is also expanding abroad. In the past few weeks, Northern & Shell has hunched an American edition of OK!, a celebrity magazine that already has Australian, Chinese and Middle Eastern editions. EMAP recently launched Closer in France and already publishes a South African edition of Heat, a bestseller in Britain. Celebrity hounds who cut their teeth in Britain's competitive market are in demand abroad. The National Enquirer, a hard-nosed American scandal sheet famed for pushing back the boundaries of taste--and of free speech--was re-launched earlier in the year by a team led by Paul Field, formerly of the Sun, and stuffed with alumni of British tabloids and magazines.

Celebrity magazines were not a British invention. Hello!, which is still widely read but which has been waning of late, originated in Spain, where Hola! provided a hint of glamour to women under Franco's drab reigh. Before that, magazines grew up around the film industry in America. Some reported what the studios wanted them to say; others, such as Confidential--which became the biggest-selling magazine in America in the 1950s--aimed to dish the dirt on the stars. In Britain, celebrity news has been used to sell newspapers for more than a century. The News of the World, which gleefully reported aristocratic scandals in the 19th century, first appeared in the same year as Dickens's "A Christmas Carol".

Modem Britain has given the gossip a new sophistication. Part of the secret has been to separate celebrity revenue streams, Julian Henry of Henry's House, an agency for celebrities, distinguishes between a celebrity's craft (such as singing, stripping or kicking footballs) and their celebrity rating, which has a trajectory of its own, and often has an inverse relationship to the talent a famous person has, or once had. This second stream can often be more valuable than the first, and Britain's celebrity industry has become adept at creating and selling it.

Take, Peter Andre and Katie Price, who are to marry later this month. The pop singer and the model better known as Jordan, met when their careers were flagging, on a reality TV show--that essential new cog in the celebrity machine. They have sold rights to the wedding, built around a Cinderella theme, as an exclusive to OK! for a small fortune (a price, the

A．as many celebrity magazines as Americans do.

B．more celebrity magazines per head of population than Americans.

C．a grand total of 23 million celebrity magazines each year.